CNN host tells the truth about RFK Jr’s endorsement of Trump: ‘It is huge, it is everything’
CNN host Erin Burnett pointed out to viewers, “It is more than the margin between Harris and Trump.”
As Democrats continue to downplay the significance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to suspend his campaign and endorse former President Donald Trump, CNN host Erin Burnett admitted the truth: “It is huge, it is everything.”
Looking at the latest New York Times/Siena College polls of battleground states, Burnett told viewers, “The latest swing state polls show Kennedy with 5 or 6 percent of the vote. And so, when you think about it overall, you may say ‘Well, that’s not a big deal.’ Actually, if that is the case in swing states, it is huge, it is everything. It is more than the margin between Harris and Trump in some of those states.”
CNN's Erin Burnett reacts to RFK's endorsement of Trump: "The latest swing state polls show Kennedy with 5 or 6 percent of the vote. Now you might say, that's not a big deal… Actually, if that's the case, it is HUGE — it is everything" pic.twitter.com/773wMXdjqG
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) August 23, 2024
In the clip below from Friday morning, presidential historian Tim Naftali’s take on the implications of Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump clearly disappointed CNN anchor Fredricka Whitfield.
“His [Kennedy] pulling out is significant because he was taking more votes – potential votes – from Trump than he was from Harris,” Naftali said. “But, we don’t know how many people who said they were going to vote for him will actually turn up on Nov. 5.
He noted, “What is clear, however, is that these races at the moment in the seven battleground states are close. So, a couple of thousand votes [in] this direction or that direction matter. . . . This is such a close election.”
"This could be SIGNIFICANT. He was taking more votes from Trump than he was Harris… Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s endorsement of Trump is significant"
Presidential Historian reacts to RFK endorsing Trump pic.twitter.com/LZ3oKKEbUm
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) August 24, 2024
In the tweet below, senior Trump adviser Jason Miller posts an internal memo from the Trump campaign’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, that shows why he believes Kennedy’s endorsement will help Trump.
[Note: The Trump campaign’s estimations of Kennedy’s share of the vote in the seven battleground states are slightly lower than the results from the New York Times/Siena College that Burnett had featured. This makes their position even stronger.]
Fabrizio tells colleagues that “the data speaks for itself. … As you can clearly see, in every single state RFK Jr.’s vote breaks for President Trump.”
Using data from their “most recent round of battleground state surveys,” Fabrizio begins with Kennedy’s current level of support in each of the seven swing states. He then provides his expectations of how Kennedy’s share of the vote will be divided between Trump, Harris, and undecided voters.
[Please click on Miller’s post to view all of the data.]
Each state shows a net advantage for Trump. These range from a paltry 2% in Michigan to a whopping 50% in Nevada. Results for the other states are as follows: Arizona, +25%; Georgia, +13%; North Carolina, +36%; Pennsylvania, +13%; and Wisconsin, +30%.
Fabrizio explains, “To put these numbers into perspective, the net vote gained in a state like Arizona based on just a 2020 turnout model, would be over 41,000 votes [or] nearly 4 times Biden’s winning margin, or in Georgia, the net gain would be 19,000 votes, nearly twice Biden’s margin.”
🚨RFK Jr. voters move overwhelmingly to President Trump!🚨 pic.twitter.com/b3oNacppkW
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) August 23, 2024
In what’s shaping up to be another close race decided by razor thin margins in a few swing states, Kennedy’s endorsement could make all the difference.
Moreover, the timing of Kennedy’s decision was perfect. Coming as it did the day after the end of the Democratic National Convention, the news stole the thunder from Harris’s well-received Thursday night speech. Kennedy’s announcement dominated the news cycle on Friday and, at the very least, will reduce the size of Harris’s expected convention bounce.
I’ve never been a fan of the Kennedy family. But in March 2021, I watched a podcast of a conversation between Kennedy and liberal author Naomi Wolf, a one-time adviser to former President Bill Clinton, and he won me over.
[Kennedy’s podcast, called “Truth: Fighting for Our Constitutional Rights,” can be viewed here.]
Recounting an experience he’d had at a then-recent political rally in Berlin, Kennedy said, “I was shaking hands and I wasn’t wearing a mask. Nobody was. There were a million people there and no one was wearing a mask. An NBC crew came up and said, ‘Aren’t you scared of getting the coronavirus?’ I said, ‘There’s something I’m more fearful of.’ They asked, ‘Like what?’ ‘Like losing my constitutional rights.’”
He continued, “The American Revolution took place because you had people who were willing to die for the Constitution. Not lose their rights. The Constitution was not written for easy times or popular speech. … It was built for emergencies and to protect the speech that was unpopular, that was dissenting government policies. … For hundreds of years, our government protected that right religiously. You get to say things that offend other people.”
Kennedy is an old-school Democrat, and as we look around at the current political landscape, we see that very few of them still exist. He is a man of integrity who was terribly wronged by the Democratic Party over the course of the last 18 months, as Trump was.
Hopefully, by working together, they can settle the score in November.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
Dems have been been doing a good job driving their people to desert them. Thank god that they are so arrogant.
Because they don’t need those little people. they cheat.
You nailed it; and thankfully, arrogance is not yet an American virtue.
It’s become a Democratic virtue.
Narcissism, smugness, hypocrisy, arrogance and stupidity are a dangerous and self-defeating combination of personality traits, and, the vile Dhimmi-crat apparatchiks have them in spades.
Depends on the definition of “Old School”. The Democrat party has always been chummy with some aspects of communism although closeted. Teddy Kennedy offered the Soviets a deal to help stop Reagan. The march toward socialism has been the course of the Democrat Party. (Lenin… communism is s0cialism in a hurry). Everyone has a limit to their participation in the socialist political Milgram Experiment… and RFK-Jr found out the hard way that his limits were surpassed a long time ago.
He has learned the hard way just how far the Dem Party has morphed. At least he now has a glimpse into the world of MAGA.
“Teddy Kennedy offered the Soviets….”
And Tip O’Neill was one of Reagan’s closest allies against the Russians. Those were different times, and not all Democrats were Ted Kennedys.
I think The Swimmer was more interested in power and anything that would get him a seat at the top than communism itself. He just wasn’t picky as to who his allies were.
Actually he didn’t offer any deal. He simply asked for Soviet help in defeating Reagan, without promising them anything in return. Presumably he expected them to take Reagan’s defeat itself as their only reward. They declined.
Worst use of the word “simply” ever.
Yup. We still call that “treason.”
No, we can’t, actually, even if he had offered them a deal. But he didn’t even do that.
How so? The claim was that he offered them a deal. The fact is that he didn’t. Therefore the claim is false. End of story.
So yes, “simply” is completely accurate. He did not offer them anything at all, but simply asked for their help. They ignored him.
IMO Trump and Kennedy need to run together the rest of the way on the theme that we need to bring back the America where Democrats and Republicans were not all that different and where JFK, RFK and DJT as a younger Democrat had similar values. “We need to bring the country together politically and repudiate the left-wingers that are doing so much damage.” IMO the recurring presence of Kennedy sends the critical message that it is OK for a Democrat with a brain to vote for Trump. I think enlisting Tulsi Gabbard might also help.
“”Democrats and Republicans were not all that different””
That’s funny. That’s what the Trump cult has been saying for the past 8-9 years. Now, suddenly, it’s a good thing?
Whiplash is a real pain in the neck, isn’t it? LOL. What a bunch of hypocrites.
Isn’t that what the Trumpalos call the “uniparty”?
We can discuss the statistics all day long but at the end of the day I can publish data that says the sun rises in the west.
What I think is more important is that someone in the left has finally said “enough” is was willing to explain why in compelling terms and then act upon his convictions regardless of how it affects him personally.
I think Comrade Kamala is going to begin melting pretty soon.
From your lips to God’s ears Peter.
She is one bad debate performance – or bad interview – away from that.
If Kennedy can channel that great legacy of his family and how those Democrats are more like today’s Republicans that could be huge. Of course the media will continue their tactics against him where they just try to make him seem crazy or unhinged; that’s the playbook they’ve been going with to attack him. Or Kamala’s latest lame attack “weird,” as if weird is somehow bad to a group of people with blue hair, nose rings, tatoos, opposite hormone injections, pussy hats and 9,000 personal pronouns. Trump should start making “stay weird and vote for me signs.” It would be a hit!
The “weird” thing is aimed at leftist women. I think the intention is to try to insinuate a creepy dangerousness to him as in “He was just weird. I didn’t feel safe there with him.”
Interesting! I was wondering because since when is weird an insult? So in this case weird=creepy. So JD Vance is creepy because he made fun of cat ladies like my sister , who is a huge leftist progressive
RFK had half his brain eaten by a worm, just to make it fair.
America can be fooled only once per decade.
But when they do, the consequences last eight years.
https://loudobbs.com/news/rfk-jr-reveals-the-true-meaning-behind-the-term-maga-after-endorsing-president-trump/
What “MAGA” really means.
“The phrase has troubled liberals who think it is a call for a return to an America before civil rights, gay rights, and women’s rights. But I have a more generous interpretation, one that is truer to my experience of Donald Trump as he is today.”
“Make America Great Again” recalls a nation brimming with vitality, with a can-do spirit, with hope and a belief in itself. It was an America that was beginning to confront its darker shadows, could acknowledge the injustice in its past and present, yet at the same time could celebrate its successes.”
“It was a nation of broad prosperity, the world’s most vibrant middle class, and a idealistic belief (though not consistently applied) in freedom, justice, and democracy. It was a nation that led the world in innovation, productivity, and technology. And it was the healthiest country in the world. I have talked to many Trump supporters. I have talked with his inner circle. I have talked to the man himself. This is the America they want to restore.” – Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think they may be overestimating the impact. Many of those people backing RFK Jr are those that do not like either of the candidates. A large majority may just sit home and not vote.
That is what I predict, as well.
Some will stay home for sure, but I think many of his supporters will be swayed by his hearty endorsement of Trump. At least I hope so!
I don’t know I like RFK and did consider voting for him ; but I’m voting for Trump and so was a friend of mine. So there are some people out there who will be swayed by his endorsement for sure ; likely more independents who didn’t feel connected to either candidate but dont like censorship and thought police. In that case Trump is the better candidate. So I disagree Kennedy’s appeal is to people who felt disenfranchised during Covid and knew it was insane but were forced to go along with the madness. That madness is more associated with Democrats.
A few things that have struck me about the whole RFKJr thing.
1) The Dems kept saying that he was pulling more votes from Trump than Biden, but what they kept actually doing was trying to push him out of the race.
2) I suspect Kennedy’s supporters have always been a mix of Dems who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Biden, Reps who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Trump, and true believers in Kennedy himself.
3) When Biden was defenestrated, Kennedy lost some supporters and Harris gained some — the ‘any Dem but Biden’ contingent defecting to her.
4) The bulk of the Kennedy true believers will probably follow his lead and switch to Trump (especially given the prospect of a high-level position for him in Trump’s admin).
5) His neverTrumpers will scatter to Harris or Stein, or stay home and cry into their beer.